It is an issue that has generated heated debate throughout the course of recent history. It has led to broken-bottle bar fights, local uprisings and national revolutions.
Why, then, did the question of taxation seem to raise little discussion at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday?
With virtually no voicing of opinion and hardly any serious debate, the Board of Supervisors approved two tax ordinances that would appear before voters on the fall ballot. The first measure, which would raise the local sales tax a quarter-cent to 8.75 percent, secured a dominant 9-2 victory. The second, a proposal to reinstate a gross receipts tax on businesses, also passed with flying colors, 8-3.
These revenue-boosting proposals come as the Board tries, with time running out, to crank out a sound budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Having already tweaked Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recommended budget to minimize the loss of programs and positions that they have deemed essential, the supervisors have taken up the mayor’s proposed tax increases to fill in the gaps and shortfalls in the proposed $5 billion budget.
It is clear, from the final votes at least, that the Board is ready to put the issue of increased taxation in the hands of the voters. But, to many, this decision seemed unnecessarily hasty, leaving some progressives wondering why the Board did not at least discuss other methods of taxation before approving the mayor’s recommendations.
At least one supervisor was openly baffled by the lack of deliberation over the seemingly highly contentious issue. “There’s no engagement at all here. I’m not sure what our job description is” if it’s not to discuss legislation like this, Supervisor Chris Daly said.
Earlier, members of the public articulated ideas for alternate tax increases that could benefit the city in various ways while raising revenue to cover departmental needs.
Jeremy Nelson of Transportation for a Livable City, for one, asked the Board to consider raising the parking tax by 10 percent. Raising the parking tax, he said, was the only pro-transit and environmentally beneficial tax increase being discussed. Furthermore, the parking tax spike, unlike other tax increases, would win on the November ballot because most people who pay the parking tax do not live in the city and are therefore ineligible to vote on the issue.
But Nelson’s argument apparently did not rub off on the Board. When Daly readdressed the issue, asking his colleagues what they thought, no clear response emerged. Daly pressed the Board to consider alternatives to the sales tax increase, noting that low-income San Franciscans were unlikely to vote for a raise in a regressive tax. But only one other supervisor, Board President Matt Gonzalez, opposed the sales tax ordinance when it came time to vote.
Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Jake McGoldrick conceded that no one likes paying taxes. Still, they voiced in harmony, a raise in sales tax was a necessary step that would not have a substantial impact on any one demographic.
After agreeing to send the sales tax measure to the ballot, the Board also passed Mayor Newsom’s proposed one-tenth-percent gross receipts business tax. Daly’s modified proposal, a gross receipts tax of 0.15 percent that would have generated, on an annual basis, $14.8 million more than a 0.1 percent tax, was soundly rejected – again, after practically no debate.
Following the vote, members of the public could only guess what the supervisors who refused to speak were thinking. And, more importantly, why they had not participated in what an article in Monday’s Chronicle predicted would be a “vigorous debate, especially over taxes on businesses.”
